Mika Hakkinen To Be Ambassador For
The 2021 ROADPOL Safety Days
Mika Hakkinen taking part in 2021 ROADPOL Safety Days campaign video.Double Formula 1 world champion Mika Hakkinen is to be an ambassador for the 2021 ROADPOL Safety Days campaign.
The news broke out at the campaign’s announcement event, carried out in Mainz, Germany and virtually hosted by member state Cyprus.
The Finnish driver called on state and private institutions, NGOs and universities as well as members of the public to join the campaign targeting 0 deaths on the road for one single day. By tradition the campaign will take place from the 16th to the 22nd of September intentionally coinciding with the European Commission's European Mobility Week.
Messages
“ROADPOL Safety Days Campaign indicates the necessity to spread important messages on road safety in order to persuade road users that the respect of traffic rules must be their main responsibility in order to fulfill the campaign’s slogan “Stay Alive And Save Lives”, said Chief Superintendant Ioannis Mavrohannas, Director of Traffic Department at Cyprus Police and member of Roadpol Council in his welcoming speech as virtual host of the launching event. He added that one of ROADPOL’s aims is to convince every participating country to maintain and promote important levels of police enforcement during difficult times, when police forces attention may have been paid to issues related with the pandemic. The representative of Cyprus also urged Traffic Police Forces to evaluate and analyze the effect of the pandemic on road safety indicating that the topic is among the main ones of this year’s campaign. “We can, then, exchange ideas on how we can achieve our targets in the near future and in the long run, based on our strong relationships and our common targets”, concluded Mavrohannas.
ROADPOL General Secretary Heinz-Albert Stumpen.Themes
On his behalf ROADPOL General Secretary Heinz-Albert Stumpen informed viewers about this year's other campaign themes such as inappropriate speed, distraction, alcohol and drugs and usage of seat belts and gave insight to the basics of the campaign. “ROADPOL Safety Days are based on three pillars – police enforcement, prevention activities as well as the campaign’s pledge which road users take to obey traffic rules particularly in this week in September in order to achieve the goal – zero deaths on the road”, Stumpen explained.
ROADPOL President Volker OrbenConcern
Grave concern on plans to future Event Data Recorders (EDRs), also known as Automobile Black Boxes, was expressed by ROADPOL’s President Volker Orben in his speech. “ROADPOL is about enforcement. But for effective enforcement the police need sound legislation. Which is not the case with the forthcoming delegated act destined to implement the EU’s new General Safety Regulation (GSR) for motor vehicles particularly concerning the EDRs“, Orben stated. He elaborated that the draft act disables future black boxes to record time, date and location of events which essentially makes them useless for investigating causes of road crashes. (Read more)
Video
A promotional campaign video was also presented at the event with the participation of Mika Hakkinen and European Commissioner for Transport Adina Valean. Other prominent supporters of ROADOL Safety Days took part in a panel session emphasizing on the importance of such campaigns for increasing road safety not only in Europe, but also globally.
Watch the event and help spread the message:
Stay Alive And Save Lives!
